Australian Iraq casualty buried after body mix-up

CANBERRA (Reuters) – The first Australian soldier killed on
active duty in Iraq was buried with full military honors on
Tuesday amid confusion over the cause of death and a bungle
which saw the wrong body initially sent home from Baghdad.

Prime Minister John Howard attended the funeral of Jake
Kovco as authorities cleared the body of a Bosnian man to be
sent back to his family after it was wrongly shipped to
Australia.

Kovco, 25, a sniper deployed to provide security for
Australian officials in Baghdad, died after he was shot in the
head in his room in the Iraqi capital on April 21.

Australia’s Defense Force originally said Kovco died after
an accident while he was cleaning his handgun, but an inquiry
is now under way after it was found he was not cleaning his gun
at the time.

“There is no evidence to suggest it was anything other than
a tragic accident,” the Australian Army newspaper said on
Tuesday.

Australian newspapers said a coroner had found the gun was
not close to Kovco’s head when he was killed, lessening the
possibility his death was suicide. The Age newspaper said the
bullet that killed Kovco was still missing.

The body mix-up and continuing confusion over how Kovco
died has severely embarrassed the government. Both the prime
minister and his defense minister have personally apologized to
Kovco’s widow for the bungles.

An Australian coroner has formally identified 47-year-old
Bosnian contractor Juso Sinanovic, who died of a stroke on
April 17, as the man sent to Australian instead of Kovco last
week.

Sinanovic’s body was released to the Defense Department on
Tuesday. A spokesman said Sinanovic’s body was expected to be
returned to Bosnia, via Kuwait, later this week.

Howard, Defense Force chief Angus Houston, and Nelson all
attended Kovco’s funeral in the small town of Briagolong in the
southern state of Victoria.

The coffin, draped in an Australian flag, was borne on a
gun carriage to the nearby cemetery for burial.

Kovco was the first serving Australian soldier to die in
Iraq, although an Australian was killed there last year while
serving with Britain’s Royal Air Force, and a special forces
soldier died in an accident while awaiting deployment to Iraq.

Australia was one of the first countries to commit forces
to the U.S.-led Iraq war and still has about 1,300 military
personnel in and around Iraq.